The majority of Coventry City fans won’t go the games at Northampton Town’s Sixfields

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A new campaign group is launched, fans hold a protest, another petition gathers signatures and, let’s not forget, Coventry City put in a brilliant performance to hammer the previously unbeaten league leaders 3-1 in front of a pitiful crowd in Northampton.

This is what passes for a normal week round here.

This column should be about what a great manager Steve Pressley is turning out to be – working wonders at a club which cut the wage bill in half in the summer. It’s not.

I should be rambling on about a fantastic and effective style of play that is re-igniting the Sky Blue flame and getting fans flocking back to watch the team at the Ricoh. I’m not.

Every man and his dog claims to know what the majority of fans want – apparently City back at any cost.

It’s certainly a view with which I have a lot of sympathy. My job, and thus my ability to pay my mortgage, is largely based on the fortunes of the Sky Blues. You’ll therefore have to cut me some slack if at any point you think I am biased.

But the latest poll on our website asked fans if the council should sell the Ricoh Arena to Sisu to get the Sky Blues back in Coventry. Sixty-six per cent said no.

Who’s right?

Our poll is certainly not scientific and it is not conclusive. It is indicative.

So let’s deal with cold, hard undeniable facts.

Our City Must Stay petition was signed by more than 15,000 people. An impressive total by any measure.

More than 7,000 people marched through Coventry to Broadgate with the Sky Blue Trust. Non-one can deny that was a dramatic show of strength and unity.

But here’s the killer statistic. City’s average gate at the Ricoh last season was 10,950. At Sixfields City are being watched by little more than 2,000 fans, half of them supporting the visitors.

City fans are voting with their feet, despite the lure of free-flowing, attacking football that has yielded 30 goals in 13 League One games from a team that would be fourth were it not for the ten-point penalty.

We’ve all got our Christmas wishes but I imagine Councillor Lucas’s is shared by every City fan.

This newspaper has always maintained there is a deal to done and Lucas’s statement didn’t seem to rule that out. A small but significant step in the right direction.

But she certainly seemed to rule out doing a deal on the cheap. I don’t pay council tax in Coventry – like the club’s proposed new stadium, I am located just outside – so I’ll leave it you whether that is a reasonable stance or not.

Joy Seppala, in an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, has already laid out her position, which equally gives us hope that she, too, is open to a deal.

They should both get on with it then.

The club has lost millions playing in front of half-decent crowds at the Ricoh. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the business model at Sixfields, with no sponsor and gates that are beaten by some non-league clubs, is more than a little fragile.

Sisu have said they will soak up the losses.

Seppala’s investors are also willing to fund the planned new stadium, to be built in three to five years. You have to wonder what their business plan forecasts crowds will be at Highfield Two if it takes until 2018 to open?

The club missed their own target of finalising a deal to buy a new stadium site in mid-September but hoped to finish due diligence four weeks later. Still no news. In fairness, land deals are complex but the longer it drags on the more likely it becomes that three years stretches to five.

How many of the disaffected and disenchanted will remember that they used to go the football on a Saturday and pick the habit back up?

That’s why we have to get the club back sooner rather than later. Some fans have expressed doubt over the Highfield Two plan but let’s take Seppala at her word.

She has the cash to keep the club alive for five years and build a new ground. So that’s anywhere between £30-£40million to spend to get Coventry City in a ground they own so they have a sustainable future.

ACL has a ground, purpose-built for football which has no club playing there.